Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Made In Hong Kong Collection : A Better Tomorrow III

Tsui Hark's A Better Tomorrow III was released by M.I.H.K in 1995 with the catalogue number HK017. The cover and liner notes are below the text, click to see them full size.

After the fallout between John Woo and Tsui Hark while making A Better Tomorrow II, the two filmmakers went their separate ways. Woo taking his outline for the third Better Tomorrow film and turning it into A Bullet In The Head, and Hark developing another Vietnam set idea to tell the back story of Chow Yun Fat's Mark Gor. Hark's film is a solid drama punctuated with excellent action sequences, which unfortunately seems to be criminally underrated by many fans of Hong Kong cinema. With excellent performances from Chow Yun Fat and the late Anita Mui, what's not to love?

The MIHK tape presents the shorter version of the movie, rather than the extended Taiwanese cut.

About Me

I discovered Hong Kong cinema over 20 years ago when Channel 4 showed a series of Hong Kong ghost stories which included screenings of Rouge and Encounters of the spooky kind. I watched them all and wanted more,next up was Jonathan Ross' Incredibly strange film show on Tsui Hark where they showed a clip of Chow Yun Fat hiding guns in plant pots from A better tomorrow and the shootout that follows. My mind was blown there and then but the thing that made me a fan forever more was seeing a trailer on a palace video release for The killer. Ever since I have been watching and spending far too much money on HK related goodies (and the kit to watch them on). The blog is somewhere to put my thoughts on my HK passion, a passion that refuses to die even though HK cinema is struggling at the moment.